


Mirrors

by UnfortunateImplications



Category: Avatar (The Last Airbender)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Family resemblance, Gen, I regret everything, how many fics will i write about azula? nobody knows, sad fire nation kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 20:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10793925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnfortunateImplications/pseuds/UnfortunateImplications
Summary: Azula takes up talking to the mirror





	Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> Will I ever write something that isn't incredibly Azula centric? Nobody knows.

ix.

There is a mirror in her mother's room. Large and gold and twice her size. It's far too gaudy to be of any practical use, just a wedding gift from her father who had only done it for decorum's sake. It was, after all, an honour to marry a man with his name and title. 

When Azula was young, she was forbidden from touching it. Was told she would get the glass dirty, and god forbid the glass be dirty.

God forbid anything look less than perfect.

She catches her mother stare into it, searching for something she knows. The world she now lives in is something she has never known before, too clean and empty. Her mother's eyes seem to reflect that emptiness more and more as she ages. She is, for all intents and purposes, young. She had been married far too young, had given birth to her first child too young. She is young and afraid and the woman that she sees when she looks into that mirror is even more so.  


x.

Her mother disappears when Azula is too young to comprehend. She wakes up to find that her whole world is changed. Her mother is gone, and her father is angry, and her brother won't stop crying. Her father declares her mother dead to him and to the fire nation, but she isn't dead because she's seen her mother haunt the mirrors and she can't be dead because dead women can't reach for their daughters from behind the glass. And that's all she knows, she knows this in her ten year old heart and in her ten year old mind and father wouldn't listen anyway so why should she say anything? 

She takes to haunting her mother's rooms that have been left to gather dust in the months that follow. The jewelry and the hairbrush lie on the table where her mother had left them, the mirror doesn't gather dust, gleams just as brightly as the day she left. She looks into it, wiping her nose and watching the young woman in the glass do the same.  


xi.

When her brother is banished, her father is furious. Storms around the house blaming the staff and blaming his wife who is far gone but not gone. Azula hides away in mother's room, ignoring the dust that tickles her nose. She stares into the mirror, sees a terrified young girl who hadn't known any better and who had been left to wander an endless empty palace that had never been hers. 

She clears the dust from the top of the table, brushes the jewelry clean, still warm as if it had just been lying at her mother's throat like a jeweled collar.

It was her fault, her fault, her fault-  


xii.

The women who visit never go into her mother's room, they look into the mirror in the hallway and chatter amongst themselves. They call her father a distinguished widower, ignoring the fact that mother is not dead not dead not dead. They think she does not understand, that a twelve year old would never know any better but she does, she does because mother is not gone. She's seen her in the reflections and seen her in dreams. 

These women leave fingerprints on the hallway mirror, lipstick stains, and stray hair. She does not comment, only cleans up after them to make sure that the mirrors in the hallways match her mother's mirror. But no matter how hard they seem to try the women never live up to the reflections of his first wife.  


xiii.

If Azula had been any more naive, any more immature, she would have fallen, slipped as her brother had done. After all, she had lost her mother and brother in the span of a year. Instead, she's become resolute, determined to be something her father could be proud of. When Mai and Ty Lee visit, they comment on how beautiful the house is, how beautiful her room is. It is something she prides herself on, the beauty of their existence. 

When she mentions her mother, they ask to see her room. She slams the hairbrush down and refuses. Whatever remains of her mother is hers and hers alone even if her mother had never really been hers. Even now, she cannot have her.

Her mother lives in all of her reflections now. She knows that she is older now, knows that her face has changed, and that her eyes have grown emptier just as her mother's had. She resembles her mother too much and her father looks past her. One day he stops seeing her entirely.  


xiv.

She takes to talking to the reflection in her moments of fear. The reflection never speaks and she is left to fill the emptiness herself. Words that had never made sense and words she had heard in dreams and words she had wanted to say but had lacked the vocabulary to do so. Stories of things she's not sure happened and stories of things she wish had happened. 

The reflection doesn't age, seems to exist in a world where she can't be touched and a world beyond time. She knows it isn't true, knows that her mother must be somewhere out there, just out of reach, just as she always had been to her daughter. She laughs at the woman in the mirror, her mother hadn't care for her and even now she doesn't care about her, even in her dreams she cannot make her mother love her enough to stay. The reflection laughs back, tears streaming down that ageless face.  


xv.

Her brother returns, hair longer and face still scarred. _Their_ father ignores him, pretends that he still only has one child and her brother wilts. The boy who returns is not the same as the one who left, he is softer now and easier to bruise. He still cries into his pillow like he had when they were young but now there is no one to comfort him. When he sees her he stops, she has grown too much like their mother in the years that have passed. She resembles her mother and she can no longer tell when she's looking at her mother or looking at herself in that useless mirror that's been hanging in an abandoned room in an abandoned palace for five years.

He asks to see their mother's room and she declines, lies. Tells him that it's been emptied and is now used for storage. He never questions her and she wonders when she became such a skilled liar.  
She supposes it began with the mirror. If you can lie to a reflection you can lie to yourself.  


xvi.

This was supposed to be the crowning point of her life. Her moment of pride. 

There is no one to share in her glory with. Her mother's mirror hangs from the wall, untouched as the day she left. The woman in the mirror is not her. The woman in the mirror is not anyone she recognises, not anymore.

" I didn't want to miss my own daughter's coronation. The Woman That Is Not Her Mother says.

She can only scream in response "Don't pretend to act proud. I know what you really think of me. You think I'm a monster."

"I think you're confused. All your life, you've used fear to control people, like your friends, Mai and Ty Lee."

"But what choice do I have? Trust is for fools. Fear is the only reliable way." she squeezes her eyes shut " Even you fear me."

" No, I love you, Azula, I do. The Woman That Is Still Not Her Mother says. 

She screams, throws the heavy inlaid hairbrush at the mirror. The mirror shatters, and she sees the young woman and she is terrified. The Woman That Is Most Definitely Not Her Mother is silent, only stares at the person who is not her daughter collapse to the floor sobbing and searching the reflection for something she does know.  



End file.
